How do we avoid tanking developer velocity when we turn on enforcement?

Use tiered risk and progressive enforcement. Start in audit mode for two weeks, then soft-fail, then hard-fail only for regulated services. Track PR cycle time and failed check rates; tune rules before expanding scope.

We’re on GitLab/Jenkins, not GitHub Actions. Does this still work?

Yes. Semgrep, Conftest, Syft/Grype, and Cosign are CI-agnostic. Replace Actions with GitLab CI YAML or Jenkinsfiles; the pattern—checks on PRs, signed SBOMs, and attestations—stays the same.

What about Kubernetes runtime policies?

Enforce at deploy with OPA Gatekeeper or Kyverno for cluster policies (egress, allowed annotations) and verify in CI that manifests will pass. Defense-in-depth: static fail early, dynamic enforce always.

How do we prove compliance to auditors without manual screenshots?

Publish SBOMs, vulnerability scan results, and policy attestations per release SHA. Store them in your registry and an evidence bucket. Provide a report mapping control IDs (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI) to these artifacts. Auditors love immutable, signed evidence.

We have a lot of AI-generated code creeping in. Any special handling?

Add Semgrep rules and pre-commit patterns tuned for ‘vibe code’ issues: insecure defaults, missing timeouts, eval/exec usage, and unsafe deserialization. Gate on these in PRs. GitPlumbers can run an AI code rescue to clean up and align with your standards.

What’s the first rule you’d ship if you could only pick one?

Secrets prevention with pre-commit + PR blocking. It’s high-signal, universally applicable, and pays off immediately in risk reduction and audit hygiene.

Security-compliance · Dec 6, 2025 · 10 minute read

Ship Policy, Not PDFs: Secure Coding Standards That Compile in CI

If your secure coding standard lives in Confluence, it’s not a control—it’s a suggestion. Turn intent into guardrails, checks, and automated proofs that ship with every PR.

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Ship Policy, Not PDFs: Secure Coding Standards That Compile in CI

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist